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(Download PDF) The End of Forgetting Growing Up With Social Media Kate Eichhorn Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
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ttie end of forgetting
l<ate Eichhorn
The End of Forgetting
The End of Forgettin:
Crowing Up with Social Media
KATE EICHHORN
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2019
Copyright© 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First printing
Notes 145
Acknowledgments 173
Index 175
Introduction
Growing Up at the End of Forgetting
I
n the twentieth century, if one was truly mortified by a photo
graph from childhood or adolescence, there was a simple solution:
secretly slip the photograph out ofits frame or the family photo
album and destroy it. In seconds, a particularly awkward event or
stage of one's life could be effectively erased. The photograph's ab
sence might eventually have been noticed, but in the analogue era,
unless one's relatives were fastidious enough to preserve the nega
tive, one could be more or less assured that once the photograph was
ripped up or burned, this embarrassing trace ofthe past had vanished.
Without the photograph's presence, one could also assume that any
lingering memories ofthe event or stage oflife would soon fade in
one's own mind and, perhaps more importantly, in the minds of
others. In retrospect, this vulnerability to human emotion-to the
shame and anger that once led us to destroy photographs with our
2 # The End of Forgetting
during this fleeting period of life, are so easily preserved and may
stubbornly persist with or without one's intention or desire? Can one
ever transcend one's youth ifit remains perpetually present? These
are the urgent questions that this book seeks to explore.
Jenkins was not the only one to insist that the real challenge was to
empower children and adolescents to use the internet in productive
and innovative ways so as to build a new and vibrant public sphere.
We now know that a critical mass ofeducators and parents did choose
to allow children ample access to the internet in the 1990s and early
2000s. Those young people ended up building many of the social
media and sharing economy platforms that would transform the lives
ofpeople ofall ages by the end ofthe first decade ofthe new millen
nium. (In 1996, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was twelve years old,
and Airbnb's Brian Cheskywas fifteen.) But at the time, Jenkins had
a hard sell-his argument was circulating in a culture where many
people had already given up on the future of childhood. Among the
more well-known skeptics was another media theorist, Neil Postman.
Postman argued in his 1982 book The Disappearance of Childhood
that new media were eroding the distinction between childhood
8 # The End of Forgetting
and adulthood. "With the electric media's rapid and egalitarian dis
closure of the total content of the adult world, several profound
consequences result," he claimed. These consequences included a
diminishment of the authority of adults and the curiosity of
children. 8 Although not necessarily invested in the idea of childhood
innocence, Postman was invested in the idea and ideal of childhood,
which he believed was already in decline. This, he contended, had
much to do with the fact that childhood-a relatively recent historical
invention-is a construct that has always been deeply entangled
with the history of media technologies.
While there have, of course, always been young people, a number
of scholars have posited that the concept of childhood is an early
modern invention. Postman not only adopted this position but also
argued that this concept was one of the far-reaching consequences
of movable type, which first appeared in Mainz, Germany, in the late
fifteenth century. 9 With the spread of print culture, orality was de
moted, creating a hierarchy between those who could read and those
who could not. The very young were increasingly placed outside the
adult world of literacy. During this period, something else occurred:
different types of printed works began to be produced for different
types of readers. In the sixteenth century, there were no age-based
grades or corresponding books. New readers, whether they were
five or thirty-five, were expected to read the same basic books. 10 By
the late eighteenth century, however, the world had changed.
Children had access to children's books, and adults had access to
adult books. Children were now regarded as a separate category that
required protection from the evils of the adult world. But the reign
of childhood (according to Postman, a period running roughly from
the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries) would prove
Introduction It 9
Minä nyökkäsin.
X luku
Vangitseminen
Mutta jos mikään olisi voinut antaa minulle voimaa, sai sen aikaan
hänen äänensä, kun hän vastasi luutnantille.
»Ja jos niin on asia, herraseni, niin miksi annatte hänet nyt ilmi!»
Ja nyt? Mitä hän ajatteli nyt, tällä hetkellä, kun hän seisoi
hiljaisena ja mietteissään kivipenkin luona, tummana hahmona,
kasvot minusta poispäin käännettyinä?
»Mitä nyt? Mitä nyt?» kuiskasi hän ja liitti kätensä ristiin. Kaikki
väri oli hävinnyt hänen poskiltaan, ja hän loi pelästyneitä katseita
nurkkiin ja oveen. »Ei täällä ole ketään.»
Hän oli lähtenyt huoneesta ennen kuin ehdin häntä estää, ja niin
jäin seisomaan nojaten pöytään, viimeinkin sen salaisuuden perillä,
jota vaanimaan olin matkustanut näin kauas, nyt minun olisi sopinut
avata ovi, mennä yön pimeyteen ja käyttää hyväkseni tätä tietoa. Ja
kuitenkin olin silloin maailman onnettomin ihminen. Kylmä hiki kihoili
otsalleni, katseeni harhailivat ympäri huonetta, ja sitten käännyin
ovea kohden mielettömästi miettien pakoa — pakoa hänen luotansa,
linnasta, kaikesta. Olin jo todellakin astunut askeleen ovelle päin;
silloin kuului portilta kiivasta kolkutusta joka tärisytti joka hermoa
ruumiissani. Minä hätkähdin ja pysähdyin. Silmänräpäyksen seisoin
keskellä lattiaa ja tuijotin oveen kuin aaveeseen. Mutta sitten olin
hyvilläni saadessani jotakin tekemistä ja päästessäni johonkin
vaihdokseen, mieleni jännityksen huojennukseen; niinpä menin
työntämään oven kiivaasti auki.
»Missä on toverinne?»